Amazon appears to have prematurely warned workers at Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing company, about layoffs planned for Wednesday morning, sending a condolence email and an invitation to an all-staff meeting hours ahead of schedule.
Reuters reported on Friday that Amazon planned to lay off thousands of corporate employees starting this week. But the company has not yet informed the affected workers, nor confirmed the layoff plan.
The email sent Tuesday, signed by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, erroneously said that affected employees in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica had already been informed that they had lost their jobs.
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In Slack messages seen by Reuters, AWS employees who received the email said Wednesday’s meeting was canceled almost immediately. Amazon referred to the layoffs in the email as the “Dawn” project.
“Changes like this are difficult for everyone,” Aubrey wrote in the email, reviewed by Reuters. ‘These decisions are difficult and are made carefully as we position our organization and AWS for future success.’
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jobs at the company’s units spanning AWS, retail, Prime Video and human resources are expected to be affected, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, although the full scope of this week’s cuts was unclear.
Amazon laid off about 14,000 people in October as part of a broader plan to reduce corporate staff by about 30,000, people familiar with the matter said at the time.
On Tuesday, Amazon cut jobs in its Fresh grocery and Go market divisions as it plans to close existing physical stores and convert some of them into Whole Foods stores. The company did not disclose the number of affected employees.
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The size of the cuts to be announced on Wednesday was unclear. The total 30,000 jobs flagged in October would represent a small portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, but nearly 10% of the company’s corporate workforce.
Amazon, in a statement in October, linked these staffing cuts to the increased use of artificial intelligence. This post from head of human resources Beth Galetti indicated that more staff cuts were likely in the future.
Tuesday’s erroneous email referred to a post on Galetti’s blog, which has not yet appeared on Amazon’s website.
